Hi everyone, here’s a small update on what we have done lately. As always, some of these changes may be finished but awaiting patch, so just ask if you aren’t sure if they’re live.

Ingendum

As mentioned in #devposts on the official Discord server, the location of UrQa’qa Qu’ishi (Bana King) has now been revealed: DG Djane 0.17C. The dev team chose to reveal its location for two reasons. Firstly, there were initially 15 (!) Bana Kings distributed across Kalthi Depths DGs; while we have now removed 14 of them, we don’t want to penalize the many players who had found one of those that were removed. The other reason is that we have officially decided to create a custom zone that will house this uber, starting next uni. Since his location will no longer be a mystery, we feel that we may as well reveal it for this uni as well. Enjoy!

ClxS

Fixed what was wrong with the system of attaching bases to planets. You can now easily fit 7 Adamantium kits around a fairly small 7-slot planet:

Faranight

The Aether Escape super item on the Aether Scout will be changed to its intended behavior (+150 speed, not +3000 speed). A new exploration-focused ship will be added as a mission reward in Paxius for low level players who had been using the Aether Scout for its mobility.

Hi everyone, the dev team hopes everyone has had an enjoyable start to the new universe. Here’s an update on what we have done lately. As always, some of these changes may be finished but awaiting patch, so just ask if you aren’t sure if they’re live.

NCCIntrepid

Emperor Shaddam will now properly drop a Combined Aspect Tablet and his usual Emperor item drop each time you kill him next patch. You can turn in the Combined Aspects for Honorary Diplomas and Zaphragi Research Diplomas in the Serengeti Blockade. I have also finished removing all of the lore skills from the lore skill items for next patch. Enjoy being able to equip a GVMO and a KMW (why you would, I have no idea).

ClxS

Fixed Junkyard turn-in missions not using the selected item. Sorting numerical fields actually sorts numerically now (beta client only but will move to live soon). “Transfer some…” option now available when removing items from the TSL. Also identified the bug with item teleporters and Jey has fixed it. This week, I will be looking into creating a “pin item” option for gear so that it won’t be transferred out of your inventory unintentionally. This will be helpful to players who carry a lot of unequipped items around such as tractor beams, extra drones, and missiles.

SunDog60

I was requested to create two new token missions for Ancalagon the Black, and UrQa’qa Qu’ishi (Bana King). The token missions appear in Iq’ Bana and Paxian Stronghold respectively, for the bosses. I also added a breadcrumb mission for the Ancalagon the Black mission as it is out of the way of Dragon’s Lair, which appears in Earthforce Frontier Station in Sol.

Both missions revolve around the UrQa race, from their efforts to destroy other races to the technology they use. Ur qok iq’ Oj’KurniQa jij’azu?

Perpetual Motion is now offering Programming to 40 at a cost of 5 Dark Cells per. If F2P players have Programming 10 let’s say (I think around the natural random cap is 16), they would need 150 Dark Cells to train up 30 levels of Programming. This should hopefully increase the traffic in Infernal Darkness, as well as help lead F2P’s to attempt that content, or at least fly around in it and potentially find an interest in trying on the bosses.

followup patch 11.10.2017

–This patch is currently available on livetest.starsonata.com and will be on live on Friday evening–UI/Client
* Fixed and improved the ship info dialog: Now shows firing arc for lasers, more decimals for resistance and correctly updates the ship visage when changing ships.
* Fixed UseSome not working on bases (already live)

Fixes
* Fixed description of space blue delta fighter generator mission.
* Fix for item teleporter not working properly
* Fixed disconnect on importing a very large trade log
+ Fixed Twisted AI station textures.
* Centered and Strategic deployment no longer get disabled if your drones and/or bases are attacked.
* Fixed a bug with factories where their total allowed cost was 2.4b

* Fixed a bug with Shadow Ambush giving half the critical hit chance it should’ve done
* Changed starting subspace missions to work even if no pirate/ef affiliation is chosen
* Roaming Subspace AI will no longer respawn every 30 seconds
* Fixed Rajanicar’ayu Superitem so the fighters no longer return to ship
* Zarkarapratinu launched by the Alien Nest drone will shoot again
* Fixes to the Nanite Infusion devices, they’ll now track the damage you do with each damage type and use each damage type as used. The damage tracked is ‘true damage’ (i.e., what you do before the target’s resistances) and the damage applied goes through the normal steps (such as resistances). Transference damage will no longer work
* Nanite Infusion device will not damage players in no-PvP scenarios and will not do 0 damage impacts
* Corrected engines 16 mission cloud mercury amount in the mission text
* Kidd and Io will now do original damage with their Incinerators. Kidd will now use his Incinerator
+ Fixed instant respawn and kickout of lavrite boss in vulcan
+ Removed the four hidden planets from Absolution, to prevent projectiles being blocked randomly as well as to prevent prospecting nodes to generate on them (and being unavailable for prospecting)
* New God Augmenters missions fixed, beginning with the Demeter Augmenter mission (intro renamed to New God Augmenters, you will now need Infinite Knowledge instead of Augmenter Tweaking to unlock them). Available in The Acropolis
* Gave the Hull Regeneration Drones on the Vaziayu Trans Efficiency instead of Transference Resistance. This will allow them to still be healed but not drain drones/bases of all of their shields while healing
* Fixed the Engineer Capacitor Device
* Fixed Seer Class 20 requirement on the missions for the Seer’s Searing Fire
* Fixed mission text and requirements for accessing Platinum level Strontium-90 missions
* Fixed a bug in missions on reset timers causing them to abandon when they shouldn’t
* Fixed class aptitude augmenter mission only mentions 1 set while mission requires 2
* Psionic Weapon’s Jammer to no longer cause over RoF cap on AI and players

Balance Changes / Additions

* Perilous Scope properly reduces your range by 25% for 5 seconds after 5 seconds.
* Changed the sizes of base chargers with the formula used for other base items.
* Added Aug stats to increase splash/chain/etc damage and range
* Fixed Twisted Torch by reducing the bullet amount from 3 to 2 and increased damage from 20 to 30 per bullet. This will make all bullets face behind the ship without affecting dps
* Increased arcadian x bank to 18k so it can fire arcadian x laser without help
* Resistances on the purchasable Kalthi Ships have been adjusted:

Kalthi Warrior: 55>50% to Laser, 55>50% to Energy, 58>53% to Heat, 53>48% to Physical, 50>40% to Radiation, 48>38% to Surgical, 57>52% to MiningKalthi Stinger: 48>60% to Laser, 48>40% to Energy, 41% to Heat, 48>36%% to Physical, 48>44% to Radiation, 40>34% to Surgical, 48>58% to MiningKalthi Deployer: 55>45% to Laser, 55>60% to Energy, 55>45% to Heat, 55>57% to Physical, 55% to Radiation, 45>36% to Surgical, 45% to MiningKalthi Commander: 48>55% to Laser, 48>45% to Energy, 48>45% to Heat, 58>62% to Physical, 48>45% to Radiation, 43>32% to Surgical, 43>35% to Mining

* Removed the Class Requirement “from the Art of …” Blueprints* Greatly reduced cost of mercurian gear
* Increased Stygian Fist Blueprint manhours and max worker significantly, increased max workers from 1 to 100000
* Removed the max use and max workforce from base thruster blueprints. It is now 7.5mil man hours which is roughly 3 minutes with 500k workers available. Added a cost per build instead which is 250mil credits per Annihilator thruster to 25mil per Apollo thruster
* Increased base thruster blueprint build cost from 250mil each to 500mil each (Annihilator thruster) and scaled down each tech
* Kalthi Deployer drones have been heavily nerfed, and the Deployer’s themselves have been slightly buffed. The drones also orbit in a bigger radius
* Ult. Interceptor Augmenter Critical Hit Chance reduced 30%>20%, Damage increased 40%>45%
* Hybridized Ships no longer gain significant resistance weaknesses compared to the normal ships, they are now direct upgrades of their previous forms
* Pax Coronae, Scutelogica, Venaticora and Sheliak (As well as the Hybridized versions) now have +50% Shield Bank
* Blueprint packs now contain the industrial blueprint versions of the defender, platform, and assault drones
* Altered the Urchin Presence to now give 150/s energy to allies and take 150/s energy from enemies within a 500 radius. The energy requirement to power this aura is now 325/s
* Adjusted the Honey Badger drone to sustain much longer to account for the aura being disabled/scraped
* Academy kits (non-fortified) no longer have a build time on them
* Coppers now have tech appropriate Exterminators
* Reduced cost of thanars astral fire mission
* Nerfed the pirating/advanced pirating drones in bonnet, mccoy’s, rackham’s, and stede bonnet’s systems
* Space Blue Gamma’s now deploy Space Blue Alpha Prototype Fighters instead of Space Blue Alpha Fighters, this means their fighters no longer do extremely high amounts of damage
* The Hawk Blueprint now builds a Hawk Upgrade, which upgrades the Vulture into a Hawk
* The Harrier Blueprint now builds a Harrier Upgrade, which upgrades the Hawk into the Harrier. The prices of the Hawk and the Harrier have been reduced to account for the cost of building the previous ship
* All Multifiring Controlbots now have +50%>20% Electric Tempering
* Rime Drones are now Tech 4, Advanced Rime Drones are now Tech 5
* Updated Jungle to now drop 1 JAC per boss kill, guaranteed. Subemperor Baloo has a chance to drop up to two
* Changed Kalthi Wrathful and Armored Upgrades to be able to Swap to each other. ie. You are in a Kalthi Wrathful Stinger and want a Kalthi Armored Stinger, you can now simply use the upgrade on the Wrathful Stinger
* Changed Fembot Blueprint and Factory to Tech 16
* Adjusted station suite bps to require less factory parts
* Changed the laser station gear turn in mission rewards from canneries to a single terraforming commod factory
+ Added 8 new station gear turn in missions that reward terraforming factories, factory parts bundle and nu conv 2s
* Lyceum Exploration Cruiser has had it’s Offensive Field Generator changed from +150 Flat Damage to +150 Energy Regeneration. Going forward, this will be changed to +150 DPS, which means it will no longer be more powerful with high rate of fire/multiple projectiles weapons* Engines, across the board, have had their thrust increased by ~100%, and their turning increased by ~33% (This is roughly the bonuses one would get from using an Ace in a Pill II)** Ace in a Pill’s, as a result, have had their duration reduced to 12 seconds
* Uu Quu DPS increased from 140 to 196
* Increased halflife on Copper Heart to 24 hours
* Marked instanced Rumble rooms as unmappable
* Meeting Pirate Maboule mission now has Piracy level 1 as a mission goal, to inform the player of requiring Piracy to dock at Maboule’s Hideout
* Reduced manhours and maxworkforce of the vulture, reaver, absconditus, rosamarinus, equanimizer pax astronomica, dark freighter ships, to only take 5.5 hours with max workforce of 10k
+ Increased drop chance of bp and commods to make the following ships/ubers that are found in dgs/perilous space, vulture, reaver, rosmarinus, equanimaizer, pax astronomica and dark freighter
* Hydroponics and Imperial Hydroponics descriptions now state they feed 300 Workers, similar to Junkyard Hydroponics and the Harvesting Dynamo
* Fixed bug where BFDs and other neurobound drones would not stack correctly on scooping
* Changed micron mission credit, XP, and difficulty so rewards are useful at the likely level you would complete them
* Changed Darkened Diffusers to not give -Reflectivity and they don’t give visibility
* Changed Darkened Capacitor/Diffuser blueprints to have unlimited uses and are not junkyard scrapable
+ Added Darkened Capacitor/Diffuser blueprints to The Dark
* Removed Darkened Capacitor/Diffusers from drop tables
* Increased Shard/Frag Grenade’s bullet spray effect from 40% of normal damage to 200% of normal damage. (Shard/Frag Drone’s Weapons)
* Changed transference resistance on Frag/Shard Drones from 40% to 0%
+ Removed some base blueprints that can be obtained in The Acropolis via blueprint packs
* Improved damage on Anni/Ada Cannon, lowered range, and increased energy to shoot
* Prawn Piece A to H have been renamed to Prawn Piece
* Fixed typos in a couple of Catur arm subspace missions (‘etheral’ -> ‘ethereal’ and ‘LACS 1099′ -> ‘LACS S1099′)
* Decreased spawntime on Speedy Gonzales to 5 minutes (from 10)
* Allowed pax astro+ to also upgrade to hybridized pax astro
* Nerfed drop rate of hellfire, buffed drop rate of love cylinder
* Updated Carcass Missile to be shipbound and 0 size
* Changed most of the sub UZ t20 and below bps to have more reasonable maxworkforces, manhours, and costs.
* Removed about 70 class locked items from the dg drop tables and placed them in lyceum at the respective ai stations
* Added Battle Sphere superitem laser
* Reduced cost of several mission reward fighter generators. Changed missions to reward fighter generators directly instead of fighter generator BPs
* Changed all unstable overloaders to be sticky to the ship. They are now 0 size
* Mini Kasper, Kasper, Kasper+, Mzungu Disk, Faranji Stinger, Underscout, Space Blue Prototype, Reaver, Orca, Orca+, Turtle, Turtle+, Reconditioned Kasper, Reconditioned Turtle, and Tutorialis.drv have all had their weapon slots increased by one to acomodate up to 3 weapons on a berserker and 2 on a gunner including inbuilt weapons
* Ares Aegis Generator, Trident Generator and Bolt of Lightning Generator are now all super items. The Hermes Adrenaline Syringe now self injects the Hermes Adrenaline Injection into the user of the super item
* Mini Vulcanite Fighter, Ujqii Ishi, and Slumber Mc Chrome Face Fighters can now be scrapped through the Junkyard Prefab Fighter scrapping missions
+ New mission available in Serengeti Blockade, to exchange four Spirit Augmenter Blueprints into a random spirit blueprint
+ Glaucopennia’s and Phoenix’s will drop blueprints to their ships
* Fuelled energies will no longer consume fuel if you’re at maximum bank, you’ll also get your full regen when unfuelled at maximum
* New set of missions available for Lyceum Combined Augmenters. You can now recycle 10 fabrication modules of the same tier (i.e. Basic) in exchange for one random fabrication module of the same tier
* Aveksaka Xenobiology and Continued Aveksaka Xenobiology missions now require 100,000,000 Credits to complete. These missions are for obtaining an Alien Xenobiology Research Blueprint
* Aspect/Spirit/Combined Aspect of the Mastodon Augs are now attainable from The Serengeti
* Replaced Shield Monkey’s transference power from the Shield Transference with damage. ShM healing output should remain neutral, while buffing their personal and bot dps
* Removed the random boss aura from Bana King
* Changes to Engineer augmenters (stats not listed remain the same)

Twisted Tesla Augmenter: Shield regen from 60% to 0%, Energy from 80% to 125%, Transference Power from 0% to 60%, Transference Efficiency from 0% to 40%, Drone ops from 20% to 0%, Offensive Ops from 20% to 30%, Defensive Ops from 20% to 30%, Everlasting ops from -20% to 0%Qa’ik’ Banu Akk’oj: Everlasting ops from 12% to 0%Mechanical Hound Augmenter: Speed from 50% to 30%, Turning from 0% to 65%, Thrust from 0% to 110%

Strange readings have been recorded, indicating that the universe is becoming unstable. Lyceum scientists have since made a prediction that our current universe will collapse 2017-11-11 13:00 EST. All your ships should make it across into the new universe without problems, but assests such as stations and drones will need to be packed up and collected, credits on active bots will need to be collected. Remember to leave yourself in a convenient ship to travel in the new universe.

Time remaining until universal collapse

Enkelin

The team skill Warmongering has had its cost reduced to 1 skill point per level. This should help new teams who are strapped for skill points. We are also creating missions to allow you to turn in excess Spirit and “Hoberian” augmenter blueprints for another chance at the one you want.

NCCIntrepid

Suggested and completed a change to allow the turn in of 10 Combined Aspect Tablets for 2 Honorary Diplomas and a Zaphragi Research Diploma similar to the Primal Ship Remains. Combined Augmenter tablets have also been split off from the themed Emperor loot. Once this change is patched in, you will be guaranteed to receive an Emperor item on every kill of the boss.

Blue Dwarf

A conversation about fueled energies have lead us to deciding how they operate to change slightly. In the future fueled energies will not consume fuel if your energy bank is at it’s maximum capacity. If your energy is max and your fuel burns out, you’ll drop to 25% of your regen just like when you don’t have fuel. A fuel will be consumed when your bank dips. This change does not affect energy banks that produce waste. In other news, Seer is getting a new weapon in the Underminer series. The new weapon, Seer’s Sideminer, will be available from the Seer’s Conclave soon for those with the Weaponry skill to use it (22). Lastly, Sniper Analysis charge time has been dropped to 2 minutes from 5. This change will hopefully streamline some of the more tedious boss fights.

Hober Mallow

Mastodon-themed augmenters have been added to appropriate areas of the Serengeti dungeon. There is a new Aspect augmenter, Combined Aspect augmenter, and Spirit (base-only) augmenter.

Enkelin

Players have alerted the dev team that the “Bana King” uber has been difficult to find this universe. I inquired and learned that he is guaranteed to spawn in DF 480 or higher of Kalthi Depths. This isn’t a whole lot of help since there are very many DGs in that range, but hopefully anyone who is looking for him will now at least know where he may be found. Going forward, we are considering shrinking the size of Kalthi Depths. There was some initial confusion over how to interpret the XML data, but I can now confirm that he is in DF 450 this universe. Going forward, he will be placed in a custom dungeon so we don’t need to deal with this issue. Going forward, he will continue to be placed in a random Kalthi Depths dungeon but the total number of Kalthi Depths galaxies will be reduced by about half.

NCCIntrepid

I have gone through and increased weapon slots on certain ships so that they are usable by Berserker. This change only applies to ships that had very few weapon slots, and especially those like Reaver that come with a weapon equipped. I also changed the unstable overloaders that are obtainable from AI bases: they now have the “can’t unequip” tag which means they also become size 0 when equipped. You will be able to carry a good stack of them now, making them a little easier to use.

Urza

I reduced the costs of mission-reward fighter generators.

Blue Dwarf

I noticed some discrepancies in how the Lagrange Control and Resist skills work. I will publish some fixes and clarifications soon!

Hober Mallow

The Gunner proposal I posted on the forum has been accepted, it will be quite some time before we end up doing this though. I’m changing the +33% Electric Tempering aug mod on Multifiring Combat Control Bots to 20%, this should make those bots more useful to Fleet Commanders. I still have not finished with Tractor Beam balance, but I plan on doing some work in creating a Hull Expansion balance sheet so that Hull Expanders are more impactful. This will probably result in pretty radical changes to a lot of hull expanders, but overall it should be a net positive thing. Look for some commentary on both of these things in the future.

In other news, I’m also working on some proposals for Adv. Class Subskills. I want to have them done so they are easier to tackle when we finally address class balancing, so look forward to me sharing some of my rough ideas in a forum topic sometime soon as well.

Hello! Here’s this week’s installment of the developer blog. Unless otherwise indicated, these changes are all awaiting patch and not yet live. Also, we will be running a Bindomite-themed monthly event this weekend. The much-discussed revamp to the item modification system has unfortunately been put on hold due to an unanticipated drop in code dev time, so feel free to go wild with the extra Bindomite!

Blue Dwarf

The spawner timer on Speedy Gonzales has been reduced to 5 minutes, but the zone is still not instanced.

NCCIntrepid

I have changed the Carcass Missile on the Vulture to be ship-bound and 0 size while not being neurobound. This will allow you to transfer Vulture bots more easily. The JAC Drop rates have been increased in the Jungle, and Lore skills are no longer required for any of the Ancient Ruin Gear.

SunDog60

Prawn Pieces will now drop as a single uniform commodity, rather than a series of A to H of pieces. Any blueprints that required Prawn Pieces will now require this new Prawn Piece. Old A-H pieces will be renamed into the new commodity as well. This should help ease the difficulty in building the Prawn (which requires 80 pieces).

Urza

Removed most class locked items from the dg drops, and moved them to the respective ai stations in lyceums. Most of these bps/items have had there build times and max workforces adjusted to be at most 5-6 hours. A few have had there costs changed to remove Dementium costs. T20 ship dg ubers will drop their ship commods and bps 100% of the time. Also all t20 non Serengeti ships will take a max of 5.5 hours. Reduced size of inertial dampening blueprints (they used to be up to 8000 and can only be obtained in Lunacy). Buffed the drop rate of Love Cylinders from 0.5% to 2.5%. Pax Astronomica+ can now be upgraded to Hybridized Astronomica.

Hober Mallow

There is still work being done on Tractor Beams, we’ve hit some snags along the way but I’m confident we’ll have a balance sheet done within the next few weeks. In light of some conversation with end game and lower level Gunners, I’ll be writing up a forum post in General Discussion regarding Gunner class bonuses and a proposal I have in regards to the Deathblossom. Look out for that in the upcoming week.

Enkelin

Since Spirit of the Lion Blueprints are demanded at a much higher rate than any of the other Spirit blueprints, the other three variants end up accumulating in storage. We approved a suggestion to allow players to turn in any four Spirit blueprints for one Spirit blueprint of choice.

We have created new forum and Discord roles for our Press Corps. Track them down with any questions you have about the development process!

NCCIntrepid

Last week I spent some time on my massive list of improved QoL stuff. So far ready for patch is I have improved the drop rates for Jungle zones on JACs; now you will be guaranteed a JAC per boss kill with a special chance for another to drop from Baloo beyond the normal drop rates. I have also updated Kalthi Ships to be swappable. What this means is if you have your augmetners on your Berserker and decide you want a KAW instead of a KWW, you no longer need to aug reset or go buy another ship form from Paxian Stronghold. You can simply build your KAW Upgrade and equip it to you KWW instantly becoming a KAW. This will apply to all Armored and Wrathful Kalthi ship types as soon as patch hits. Lastly, I have updated the Fembot Factory and Blueprint to be T16 to ease the ability to get to Station management to actually possible without purchasing Fembots themselves.

I have a few other projects in progress as well. We finally have a resolution to the Cloning Vats: I will be adding a mission to simply get the fighter generators in the future. I will also be resolving the Hermes one hit issues. I will be working to make a low level travel ship given to you by the Paxian Ships. I will also add some new dailies and weekly missions to the Serengeti and Jungle Zones to acquire some Honorary Mentions and Diplomas.

Hober

I have further tweaked the Phoenix and Glaucopennia. Updated stats are on the test server and ready for players to test some more. I’m currently under the impression that they are a bit underpowered according to their cost, but that may be OK. I’m considering reducing their cost and rarity instead of increasing their power.

The second round of engine adjustments are now available for testing on the test server. Thrust has been increased on all Engines by 100%, while Turning has been increased by 33%. These changes are meant to mitigate the necessity of constantly using Ace in a Pill tweaks to maintain a reasonable level of maneuverability. This may mean that players who were already pretty maneuverable can now use a smaller/weaker engine, or they can instead opt to use heavier gear.

I’m working with enkelin on creating some balance standards and formulas for Tractor Beams. Right now they’re in a very weird place, with a lot of their stats decided on arbitrarily. We hope to create a much more reasonable power differential between tech levels and types of tractor beams.

Welcome to another Pixel blog where I, Pixel, will be going over what has been done over this past week.

Hober Mallow

Tentative Tractor Beam Changes

Additionally their’s been a topic made about suggesting changes to current tractor beam mechanics. Click here to find out more…

Pixel

Battle Sphere – Super Laser

Finally witness the fully operational Battle Sphere! Yes, the Battle Sphere is currently being worked on to add a super laser that will be able to cut through almost everything.
Here’s a mock demostration of the current progress on the superitem visual, this is probably going to change at the final result, as discovered some issues occur with this current animation after multiple uses.

User Interface Improvements

In other news higher resolution background textures for all dialogs in the games user interface, this will reduce artifacting that the previous version used to produce.

Ring Station

As you’ve probably noticed via this blog’s background image, ring stations! This is currently in concept stage but most of the visual work is done. Here’s some image content produced so far: